4/14/17 // Alternative Factoids

Fake Newsroom, Canyon Cinema, and Minnesota Street Project present ALTERNATIVE FACTOIDS, an hour-long program of short 16mm films from the collection of Canyon Cinema that question the veracity of cinematic images. The program is curated by Antonella Bonfanti and Jeff Lambert and introduced by Fake Newsroom editor Jason Fulford.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? 1
by Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
US 1971, 16mm, b/w & color, 5 min.

A found, utilitarian object, the overtly moralizing educational film “How to be a Good Citizen,” is elevated to the status of ‘art’. First presented unaltered and then in Landow’s color facsimile, the film is further modified by applying an opaque matte that creates a spatial paradox.

Big Story
by Nina Fonoroff
US 1984, 16mm, color, 10min

Through an assortment of traveling mattes, ellipses and non sequiturs, the remnants of a story begin to emerge: a conspiracy of three men who represent an institution flaunt an “official” discourse derived from the news media and incriminate themselves in the process. The strident voice of a newspaper hawker announcing the day’s headline is set against a series of glass buildings that constitute, presumably, the scene of a crime committed by an unknown assailant against no one in particular. “If everything – life, news, fiction – is reduced to a story that is told in a set formula, then nothing has meaning anymore.” – Robert Hawk, Film Arts Festival

What’s Wrong With This Picture? 2
by Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
US 1972, 16mm, b/w & color, 7 min.

As Landow and his students were testing a new video camera, an elderly man began to talk to them about new technology. This impromptu conversation forms the basis for a comparison of spoken and written language.

The Black Tower
by John Smith
UK 1987, 16mm, color, 24min

“The hilarious and slightly menacing ‘The Black Tower’ is one of the most accomplished films to come from the British avant-garde for years.” -Michael O’Pray, Independent Media.

This program is presented in conjunction with the Canyon Cinema 50 project, supported by the George Lucas Family Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Owsley Brown III Foundation, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and The Fleishhacker Foundation.